8 Folksongs of the Auvergne

La pastoura als camps – The shepherdess in the fields (Book 1)

Bailèro – Shepherd’s song (Book 1)

Lou Boussu – The hunchback (Book 3)

Brezairola – Lullaby (Book 3)

La fiolairé – The spinner (Book 3)

Chut, chut – Shush, shush (Book 4)

Là-haut, sur le rocher – High on the rock (Book 3)

Lou Coucout – The cuckoo (Book 4)

Although it has given few composers to the world – Emmanuel Chabrier is the only one of any significance – the Auvergne is (or was) a region rich in folksong. Situated at the heart of the Massif Central in the middle of the southern half of France, it is a generally mountainous country where life was traditionally hard and which, because of its backward rural economy, remained largely unspoiled until well into the 20th century.

Joseph Canteloube, who was born in Annonay in the neighbouring region of the Rhône Valley, started collecting folksongs in the Auvergne in the 1890s when the language of the region (nearer to Catalan than standard French) and its folk culture were still more or less intact. The first four books of his Chants d’Auvergne – comprising twenty-two songs, all in his own, often glamorous arrangements for the concert hall – were first performed between 1925 and 1932 and proved far more popular than any of his original compositions. A fifth book (of eight songs) published in 1955 was less successful.

The principal source of Auvergnat folk song was the shepherd community who, left to themselves in the mountains for months on end, had plenty of time to develop the art of singing of their own experience to melodies based on the traditional modes of the region. There are lullabies, comic dialogues, work songs and love songs, often featuring colourful local characters of one kind or another. Canteloube clearly had a particular weakness for the shepherdesses of the region even when, like the central figure of La pastoura als camps, the object of his affection turns out to be a bit of a tease.

If the orchestral setting of La pastoura als camps seems over-sophisticated for such a subject, it is because the composer was concerned not so much to echo the authentic folk instruments of the region as to evoke its romantic atmosphere. “If you suppress this atmosphere,” he said, “you lose a large part of the poetry.” Baïlèro, much the most popular of his folk-song arrangements, is both an evocation of shepherds calling to each other across the river and a rhapsody to the countryside round Cantal where the song originated. While not quite politically correct by our standards, Lou Boussu is an entertaining dialogue of pathos and pertness offering much scope for comic characterization to both the the singer and the orchestra. Contrastingly tender in sound and sentiment, Brezairola, a lullaby set to a gently rocking accompaniment, rivals Baïlèro for sheer melodic beauty.

In Lo fiolairé and Chut, chut we meet two more of Canteloube’s shepherdesses. The first reflects on a mutually satisfactory relationship with her shepherd, punctuating her song with an effectively coloured cadence based on the motion of her spinning wheel. Her vivacious and evidently younger companion might be flirtatious but, the orchestra tells us, irresistibly charming. If Là-haut, sur le rocher, a strangely sentimental setting of not very sympathetic words in standard French, is uncharacteristic of Canteloube at his best, Lou Coucout, a brilliantly orchestrated and wittily harmonised salute to the cuckoo, is much more like the real thing.

Gerald Larner © 2009